


Shabbiness Doesn't Matter

by YellowDistress



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Oneshot, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-01 13:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18335066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowDistress/pseuds/YellowDistress
Summary: Peter looked genuinely confused by that. His palms stretched upward on the table, “How will I learn?”“Another way,” Tony answered, “Not by me beating the shit out of you.”“It was an accident.”“A screw up. Again, there’s a difference.”





	Shabbiness Doesn't Matter

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what inspired this oneshot. I just thought it up and I had to write it, so here it is! Hope you all enjoy! ❤ let me know what you think.

Tony stopped contemplating the status of his mental stability the day that he decided he was going to put himself in a tin can and fly around like a superhero, trying to rescue the world from itself. Selfishly, that was not the root of everything and it should not have been. That was what drove people out of their heads onto sand dunes where people were waterboarded in caves. Where those little terrors in the night became catastrophic in the form of accidentally harming ones’ girlfriend whilst they slept. Tony stopped contemplating, but he never stopped feeling.

 

There was a moment, when he was six-years-old. A late night, his mother was in bed and his father was up late working. Tony had turned a wine glass over onto his father’s papers and it had earned him a backhand. A small bruise on his cheek, but for such a little face, it had appeared much bigger. He remembered the moment a shriek had left his lips, when Howard had lifted him and held him and told him to shush. Made him promise not to tell Maria, and the next day, for the first time in his entire life, his father brought him to an arcade with pizza. It was their first and only outing without the assistance of a nanny or his mother in tow.

 

Tony had forgotten about it. Years later he would think about whether or not it had actually happened, even though he was almost certain it had. He never told Maria because he had promised, after all, not to tell her. Besides, there was a certain loyalty to being a Stark-Man. There was no tattling, not on Howard at least. Unfaltering loyalty stemmed from a softness his father had only shown when he had been worried about a divorce and the hurricane that could result from Maria Stark finding out about where that little bruise had come from. Tony wished he had realized at the time the kind of power he had held on the side of his six-year-old baby face.

 

Peter was not a Stark, nor was he the result of an angry outburst.

 

Peter Parker was the result of convenience and desperation. A battle of opinions and violence and bloodied teeth on a cold Siberian ground. A shield into a chest, and blood behind nostrils, in the backs of throats. Peter was the result of an initial push because – _don’t don’t don’t get away, goddammit get away –_ when Starks got attached to things, it was just this weird twist in the atmosphere, something gave way, overbearing attitudes occurred. It had happened with Pepper, then there had been the Killian fiasco. Happy being blown to pieces. Rhodey falling from the sky. Peter was so wide-eyed and true and new that even though Tony had been tempted to allow that attachment to come, he had stepped away. Had ignored Happy’s calls, but had always listened to the messages. Distance meant safety, Tony was filled to the brim with toxicity that could eat through the purest of human beings. Peter was pure in that the world had not molded him into something cruel. Steve Rogers had been like that, but then Tony had seen the true fruit of his wrath in a bunker.

 

Peter Parker was not the result of an angry outburst, and yet they were there…In an arcade eating pizza.

 

Peter Parker was not the result of an angry outburst, and yet he bore a bruise on his cheek.

 

To transcend into an understanding of guilt, there is this need to comprehend where it grows. It grew behind Tony’s ears where Charles Spencer was crushed by a building in Sokovia. It grew between his index finger and his thumb, where all of those people in Afghanistan, the ones murdered by his weapons, bled out. It grew in his irises where Rhodey had hit the ground in a heap of dirt, where his spine had fractured, where their fight had turned vile. It grew between his teeth, where his mother and father had died without knowing that he was sorry.

 

It grew under his second rib where his fist had connected with Peter Parker’s face.

 

Training children comes with the risk of injury. It was different for Howard, dressed in his righteous rage, when the strike had knocked Tony off of his father’s desk chair. Peter’s face had made contact in a sparring match. There had been no rage behind it, and yet Tony was fighting the ferocious and ungodly horror that it somehow correlated. It had not hurt his hand, he was in a suit, and Peter’s flesh had popped against it, his cheek had bled where a bit of skin was cut over the bruise. Peter had looked stunned and then had insisted he was fine, but Tony remembered wine spilling over papers on a man’s desk and then being knocked out of a chair and –

 

_“Really Mister Stark, I’m fine. I’ve been hit way harder. Look, let’s go again – “_

_“We’re not going again.”_

_“C’moooon, I swear I’m fine!”_

_“I mean it Peter, we’re done for the day.”_

_“But Mister – “_

_“Did you hear me? We’re **done**.”_

A full twenty-three hours had passed since then, and Peter’s face was already healing around the purple edges, and the cut itself was a pink scab, left behind by an ability Tony was still trying to understand completely. His six-year-old face hadn’t healed that way, Peter was different though, it made every sort of sense when in that light, but it was still a bruise, a bruise Tony had inflicted. Peter seemed unconcerned, oblivious, talking and talking and shoving pizza slice after pizza slice down his throat, as he would occasionally become distracted by a random machine going off, coins jingling, tickets being dispensed. It made the headache at the base of Tony’s skull vibrate, roots spreading underneath his hair, up his vertebra then down. He pulled his left arm close and flexed his fingers. It had been his left hand that had hit Peter.

The kid had said this was where he and his friend – _Ned, Ned was his name, Tony was trying to do better, be better than Howard_ – hung out almost every weekend when they were free. It was one of the only arcades in the city that still used coins instead of game cards or some shit. So Tony had brought him, and Peter had seemed oblivious to the fact that Tony Stark probably would not spend his free time in an arcade. As far as the kid seemed concerned, they were hanging out. Spending time together, outside of the Compound, outside of training, outside of Stark Industries and the internship and all of that. It was an arcade.

 

“Flash doesn’t usually push me, but he did today, and I think it’s because someone stole his pack of sour skittles at practice – not me but I know who did – and he just…ya know pushed me down. It was really middle school. You’d think we weren’t fifteen.”

 

Tony also knew the Flash kid’s name. Peter continued on, mouth full of pizza, “But Miss Crenbanks saw and he actually got caught, which is rare, he usually gets away with everything and – Mister Stark, are you gonna eat any of the pizza? I’ve eaten like _all_ of it.”

 

The man blinked back into reality, melting out of the lights and the sound, into a semblance of solidity. Peter was staring expectantly, cheek bruised – _Tony had done that_ – and he was gesturing to the third tray of pizza Tony had them bring. Peter’s eyes were wide and round, and bright…unsuspecting of an underlying guilt in their little outing together. It made it worse, Tony was worse, his cheek burned where Howard had hit him years ago. It made the empathy more palpable, and he recalled Peter’s body jerking back in response to being hit in the face. Peter had not been wearing the suit, he had been wearing his webshooters. Tony had been in his suit because he was not enhanced, and there they had been in that situation and –

 

“No,” Tony replied, “And no offense, but greasy heart attacks aren’t really appetizing and don’t tell anyone, but I’m getting old. Pizza is dangerous.”

 

Peter swallowed his mouth full and Tony’s mind flitted to upset when the boy’s shoulders slumped and that was not his intention. The intention was to bring Peter there, and then Tony didn’t know the rest. Howard had sent him to play games all afternoon, but Peter had just been eating and talking about school. As if eight hours could be detailed into the most minute moments, a screen play. Everything from Peter’s breakfast until Decathlon practice had been covered, what was next was Tony having picked him up to come to the arcade. So there was nothing else to cover. Peter said, “We could’ve gone somewhere else…I mean, if you don’t like pizza – “

 

“I like pizza, kid. Calm down.”

 

“But – “

 

Tony shook his head, holding up his index finger. Peter stared, moment after moment passing. Vulnerability was behind the kid’s lashes, Tony saw it, he always saw it, like he seemed to be seeing the bruise so vividly. Peter shifted in the booth, like someone about to present a project proposal, but the comically bright arcade lights were spinning, and Peter’s eyebrows had delved into sympathy that Tony could not place and did not want to place. It wasn’t working whatever this was, whatever this plan had been to get rid of what was growing under his second rib. Instead it had begun to bloom and then Peter sounded terribly young when he spoke quietly, almost so hushed Tony could not hear him over the games.

 

“It’s just a bruise.”

 

Tony’s back stiffened. He sat up straighter, the headache intensified and maybe a bit of offense concocted. His face settled into that of when he was CEO, when he would have to sit in rooms with men twice his age and talk about business he did not care about. But he cared about Peter, and there was the rub. Peter bit the inside of his cheek, glancing towards the wall on the inside of the booth. He then cleared his throat and met Tony’s stern hold once more, gesturing to his face, “This I mean…It’s just a bruise. You keep looking at it.”

 

“What can I say kid, you got a good face. I marred it up.”

 

It was meant to be funny, a way to hide the forefront of anger that was aimed directly at himself, from himself. Because there was no blame in Peter’s round eyes. Just trust and comfort, but Tony didn’t want to be comforted. He wanted Peter to play some fucking video games and for the guilt to be chopped away. He wondered how Howard had done it, how he had brought Tony to an arcade and watched him play, and then how he could live with himself. Peter shifted, he didn’t really laugh, more so sighed like he was talking to a small child, “I heal fast.”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Tony’s blood pressure was rising.

 

“And you didn’t hit me ‘cause you were mad.”

 

“Still hit you.”

 

Peter shook his head, “Different.”

 

It was not different. Tony should have pulled the punch. He held his sternness. Peter was the one squirming, the one folding under his gaze, it was as if he was forcing the boy to agree with him, like he wanted him to blame Tony, to be angry. To scold him for hitting him so hard. Peter then chastised, “Colonel Rhodes dislocated my shoulder a month ago.”

 

“Different,” Now it was Tony.

 

“Nope,” Peter’s mouth upturned slightly, “We were sparring. I lost. I learned, now I know better again.”

Tony had been mad at Rhodey for a week. Peter had tears in his eyes when they had set it. The kid’s eyes had been burning after Tony had popped him. Tony had tears in his eyes after his father had smacked him. It was like a full circle, and Tony wasn’t in the arcade, he was in his father’s office, but then Peter was tilting his head to the side, saying, “And it’s kind of awesome that I could even be punched by _the_ Iron Man.”

 

Floored. Burning heaps of dry ice, Tony looked at the glass in front of him, the way it sweated onto the table. His hands felt too warm, and Tony grabbed a hold of the cold glass under his fingers, just water with a lemon, it tasted like tap water. He turned his neck, it cracked slightly, and he looked at Peter, eyes holding a hollow word that Peter could not understand, a silent plea, because Tony didn’t want to be mad at Peter. He enjoyed the kid’s company. Peter gave him a grounded sense to the world around him. It gave him something to look forward to.

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I will never hit you again. I don’t even want to entertain it.”

 

Peter looked genuinely confused by that. His palms stretched upward on the table, “How will I learn?”

 

“Another way,” Tony answered, “Not by me beating the shit out of you.”

 

“It was an accident.”

 

“A screw up. Again, there’s a difference.”

 

Peter’s eyes found the ceiling, his chest expanding, and Tony couldn’t remember what that was like. The guilt was growing too thickly below his second rib. Peter slowly looked back down, straight across the table at Tony. He questioned, “Well, are you still gonna let me stay this weekend?”

 

“What did May say?” Tony hummed, releasing the cold glass, his hands cooled to the touch, fingers going numb from the ice.

 

Peter put his fingernails between his teeth and Tony bumped his shin under the table, “Stop, that’s gross.”

 

Peter rolled his eyes, “ _She_ said you have to call her and ask. Because it’s polite when ‘taking someone’s nephew on a field trip to the Avengers facility to stay overnight’. But I know what you really wanna know, you wanna know if she’s mad about my face.”

 

“And is she?”

 

“She said next time I better hit harder.”

 

Tony couldn’t help it. He snorted. Despite the moments of rage towards himself, of wishing his bones had shattered in his hand so he could at least feel some sort of retribution after what he had done…It was Howard’s hand though, not Tony’s, and if Howard had ever laid a hand on Peter Tony might have killed him. But James Buchanan Barnes did that for him over twenty years ago. It was silence for a fallen revolutionist. A patriot. But it took Tony looking into a kid’s eyes to realize Howard was none of those things. Tony could not imagine anger being behind his fist. Not in the same way, and Howard had tried to silence him with something and Tony had maybe done the same and –

 

“Mister Stark?”

 

Tony flitted back, “Yeah.”

 

“I forgave you yesterday.”

 

Simplicity. Peter was such a simplistic kid, and Tony found it so thickly endearing. But sometimes he found it frightening. It seemed so easy for Peter. Tony had yet to forgive his father, but it was different, and he did not need Peter to inform him of that fact. But it still startled him, and drew in that difference once more. _It was different_. Everything was different. Tony set his jaw and nodded his head to hide the emotion. He had to. It was just easier that way, and he couldn’t weigh Peter down with that turmoil. Peter was a kid and deserved to be a kid, and Tony was an adult who had to deal with his issues, but it didn’t seem wrong to draw comfort from the teen.

 

Tony cleared his throat, and hummed, the subject switching, but clinging to the smile on Peter’s face, “You want another pizza?”

 

“If you promise to eat like…at least a quarter.”


End file.
